Just now, I came across this website and thought this article would be very interesting.. another Christian article, to be specific. Anyone, feel free to read it! :)



Several years back I was perusing the clearance table at a local Christian bookstore, and picked up a book titled God Dot Com. It wasn’t a very big book, maybe 120 pages, and it was only two bucks, so what the heck? I think what interested me about the book initially was that it was about an “interactive” relationship that the author was developing with the Father.

I sat down that evening to read the book, and it seemed that every other page I turned was moving me to tears because of the similarities I saw there between the author's walk with God and my own.

You see, I got saved at the age of eleven years at a vacation bible school. It was quite an experience, and something I remember like it happened yesterday. Every day when we would arrive at camp, we would assemble in the small sanctuary of this little Baptist church and the pastor would preach a little sermon before we went off to do arts and crafts, and learn all of the familiar and cute Bible stories about Jesus. The morning I got saved, the pastor was going to preach from Isaiah 53. He had a few words to explain what he was going to talk about, and prayed, then began to read. When he got to verse 5:

But He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

It stabbed me directly in the heart. I don’t know why God chose to send his spirit to minister this to me in such a deep and revelatory manner, but He did. All I heard over and over was: “This was done for you. He did this for you.” Within a few minutes, the realization that someone would be willing to taste death that I might have life just simply overwhelmed me, and I began to cry. I tried to hold it back at first, but my tears built to a crescendo of uncontrollable sobbing. The pastor's wife came down off the stage to check and see what was going on, thinking perhaps I was sick or somehow hurt. To this point there had been no altar call, no moment of decision like there is in almost every Church service I have ever attended since then. It was simply God’s spirit opening my young eyes and breaking my heart to understand the depth of what I was hearing.

When the Pastor’s wife got to me, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She then quickly realized what was happening, and asked me, “Do you want to accept Jesus?”
Again I replied: “I don’t know.”

She pressed further and gave me a little one minute synopsis on what the good news of the gospel was. I went forward, right there in the middle of the service and accepted Christ.

Not coming from what would be considered a “Godly” home, there was no real follow up, no discipleship or Bible study to continue to open my eyes to the truths of God, so by my teens, I was in the world doing everything all the other kids were doing, as far from God as I could be.

I had tried hard to walk with God several times from my early twenties, and into my thirties. It never seemed to work because I saw my nature, I knew the things I had done, and the desires and lusts that so excited my mind and my flesh STILL, even though I was attempting to walk with Him. There was this constant dissonance inside of me between what all the people were telling me I was supposed to be (Perfect, holy, sinless, etc) and what I knew of myself. So three different times I threw my hands up and said to God: “If I can’t do this right, why am I even trying? I just can’t be what they say I should, so I’m out.” The funny thing is, He never left me. In fact, sometimes I felt like when I was at my worst, God’s presence was richer and more real than when I was trying to be pious and good and nice.

In my mid-thirties, I had gotten back into the church, and this time, God began to open my eyes, give me revelation, and deepen my understanding of him. I had licked most of my bad habits, was doing my devotions, praying daily, and involved in teaching and homeless outreach. There was one area of my life that was terrible though, my marriage relationship. I prayed for four years for God to heal us, draw us together, make us love each other the way I knew we should. It seemed the harder I prayed, the worse my relationship got, not better.

So finally one day I said to God: “You know what? I have served, I have prayed, I have given of my time, and money and effort. I have been faithful, and the one thing that I have desired most, you continue to deny me. So, if this is what I get for being faithful, you can get lost, I don’t want anything else to do with this life, I’m done.” And off I went back into the world, convinced that some day, out of a clear blue sky, God was going to drop a bus on me. That never happened.

Instead in the summer of 2003 God spoke to me, and appeared to me in a vision, and called me back to himself (A story for another time). In 2004 is when I picked up the book I spoke of earlier.

During that year, I was trying hard to rid myself of the judgementalism that had plagued me for so long. I was one who sort of categorized sins. This sin is worse than that one, these others not so much, you get the idea.

So I am reading this book, and being touched and humbled, and having my mind opened to new possibilities. I think it was about six chapters in, I get to this chapter titled: “I am a hypocrite.” Ok, yeah, me too in many ways. As I begin to read this chapter, the author begins to explain that this wonderful journey that he has been describing had a very sinful starting point. He, like me, had had a vision, and God called him out. What he was calling him out of was a blatant, promiscuous homosexual lifestyle. Homosexuality had always been high on my list of the “Most Sinful Top Ten.” My spiritual jaw must have hit the floor.

Right as I read those words, it was like God himself walked in a stood peering into my heart, and this conversation erupted between He and I.

God: “Tell me, if had you known that the man who wrote this book was a homosexual, would you even have bothered to pick it up?”
Me: “No Lord, you know the answer is no.”
God: “What makes his sin any different than your own?”
Me: “Nothing Lord, nothing at all.”
God: “I have not called you to judge people, that is my job. I have called you to Love people. Go and Love people, and tell them about me.”

I had to repent, right there on the spot, I cried and asked God to forgive me for my willingness to condemn people whom I knew nothing about. You see, I think as Christians, we sometimes sort of turn church in to a “Members Only” club. We think somehow because we have said the sinners prayer, that we are in, and everyone else is out. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have come to understand through much study and seeking God that God is, at all times, speaking out to all men, asking them, directing them, wooing them to come back to him. Jesus said as much in John 6:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.

Did you see that? Anyone who listens. For someone to listen, someone has to be speaking. Also notice, He didn't say any sinless, righteous, holy, or Christian, one. He said ANYONE. It is, after all, His desire that none should perish, but that all would come to understand what was done for them at the Cross that our relationship to him might be restored.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God did not put us here to oppose the world, He put us here to be a light unto it. So then, just as He planted Israel in the midst of the most opulent, indulgent, hedonistic, and sinful nations on earth at that time, so He has placed you where you are. He did not direct Israel to go out and convert everyone, but instead gave them a way to live that would stand out to those around. I think it is a perfect reflection of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

No one lights a lamp, and hides it, but rather, it is set in a central place. It is designed to illuminate the area where it is. Live your life for Him, in Him. Let Him live his life through you, become the light of the world. The current system of the world demands that we measure up, earn our way, and pull our weight. There are people all over where you live too weakened by their circumstances to pull their weight, they can’t measure up by earthly standards, but you know Him, and He offers rest for the weary soul. There is no light in condemnation, only darkness. Become the light, and they will see, and in so doing, your Father in Heaven is glorified, and you will truly become sons of God.

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